Saint Bob returns to the fields of heartbreak

Two decades on, Bob Geldof finds thousands starving in a country gripped by a different kind of famine. Anthony Mitchell reports from Awassa, Ethiopia.

Surrounded by lush green hills and fields of young corn, Bob Geldof came face to face with victims of Ethiopia's latest drought, 19 years after the Irish pop star first called for help for the millions hit by famine in the African nation.

The 51-year-old singer turned activist saw tiny infants close to death on Wednesday in a therapeutic feeding centre where dozens of children lay waiting for high-energy food to keep them alive.

He said it brought back memories of his first visit to Ethiopia in 1984 at the height of a famine caused by drought and civil war in which hundreds of thousands died. The Band Aid fund and Live Aid concerts that Geldof - lead singer of the former Irish punk band the Boomtown Rats - helped organise raised more than $US60 million ($A91.74 million) for the victims of the 1984-85 famine.

But large amounts of relief food were withheld from regions sympathetic to a rebellion against Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was later ousted in 1991 by rebels led by Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia's present prime minister.

The United Nations children's fund, UNICEF, which has organised Geldof's five-day trip to publicise the effects of this drought, says about 80,000 children in this impoverished nation of 65.5 million are near death from lack of food. ");document.write("

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The Awassa region, 275 kilometres south of the capital, Addis Ababa, is one of the hardest hit by the drought. Humanitarian officials say the disaster has claimed 30,000 lives since late last year.

The children at the feeding centre Geldof visited are not traditional famine victims. They are suffering the fall-out of structural problems in Ethiopian farming and poor government policy.

Many people have been left with only basic rations to eat. Hundreds of thousands of children are acutely malnourished.

Ironically, the centre that cares for 156 children is surrounded by green hills and cornfields in a region that has now been hit by what aid officials call "green famine" - a situation where food planted has not ripened in time, leaving thousands to go hungry until the next harvest expected in September.

Simon Mechale, head of the Government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission, said in terms of scale and population affected, the present drought was "unprecedented" in Ethiopian history.

Last month he said there was a 340,000-tonne shortfall in the 1.46 million tonnes of food relief needed to meet the crisis.

United States Assistant Secretary for Africa Walter Kansteiner is scheduled to tour the drought-stricken areas early next month.

The US is the main contributor of food aid to Ethiopia.

Paradoxically, even during bumper harvests in Ethiopia, some 5 million people face hunger every year and depend on hand-outs because they are simply too poor to buy food.

"This is not a one-time problem. It is a cumulative effect where the problem has been increasing over the years," Mr Mechale said. "The problem is one of development and purchasing power. Unless these are answered, the problem will always been there."

At the feeding centre, Geldof asked: "Why do all this elaborate work in bringing all these people back to health if all we are going to do is send them back out to nothing?

"It probably isn't a famine yet. I keep going on about it, and I don't understand it."